For me it took 2-3 weeks to learn hiragana and katakana. I learned 5 characters per day. Recently I have been forgetting few katakana, ヌ and ネ, and I also can read hiragana much faster than katakana. Well it will improve eventually. My advice: Instead of asking how long it takes to learn 2000 kanji or all kana, start learning. Aim to little goals, like 10 kanji. It goes faster then, when I was learning kana, I aimed just to learn 5 kana completely.

I see no purpose defining "learn" as anything short of *functional* usage of the characters; for that, it took me about 2.5-3 years or so to be essentially fully fluent in reading and writing hiragana.

To be able to look at a character and eventually remember what it sounded like only took me about 30 minutes with a stack of flashcards. To be able to read it at a rate similar to what I read the roman alphabet took me about a month and a half of daily study.

It's Katakana that kills me. Almost a year in and I still mess up Shi/Tsu N/So.

I've been studying Japanese for nearly three weeks (twenty days exactly) and have almost gotted through all the Hiragana. I am really enjoying it. I learn a new row every few days or whenever I am pretty certain I all the characters I am currently working with are pretty much branded in my head. Everyday in my note book I wirte each character till the end of the line , then so on and so forth on the next line.

I was just wondering how long it took you to learn Hiragana? Alot of people seem to be able to do it in a matter of days which is pretty amazing.

It took me about 2 days, but I am still practicing them every single day to make them stick in my head. Being able to read them is one thing, but writing them correctly is the hardest part! Yudan Taiteki is right though... even if you learn to read and write them all, it will be a long long time before you can process the symbols quickly and read hiragana normally...

Last edited by pubju on Fri 09.28.2007 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've been reading Japanese for pretty long, and tried to learn katakana, in the very beginning, but never had the guts to really try to learn it for real and forgot the most of it. So I started with that three days ago.. But hiragana this time since I figured it makes more sense to know that than knowing katakana. And now I know 15 hiraganas. First I thought about 10/day, but the fact that I have something about 15 minutes every day to learn them, I decided five was better. And I write them down all the time, sometimes I write phrases in Swedish, Finnish or English and just change the letters. Like, I change all a letters to the hiragana a and so on..

Any time you have some down time (riding in a car, bus, train, airplane; waiting for someone; commercial breaks while you're watching TV) just flip open your cell phone and start reviewing. Great way to quickly pick up and commit them to memory.

I can read sentences I see in hiragana, although most of them are simple because they're from the stuff I'm using. I fully agree though that it's much easier to learn the sounds of the shapes than to be able to read it. It kinda reminds me of learning sheet music. if I look at them, I can tell what notes (well, could when I was studying music) they want me to play, but I can't just look at them and have the music flow to my finger tips as someone who is fluent could.

I had to learn hiragana and katakana in 2 weeks for a test.
The test went really wel (98 out of 100 points) and now, 4 weeks after the test i can safely say I can read and write hiragana and katakana pretty fast and good.
Wich is ofcourse really helpful because my books are all in hiragana and katakana. No Romaji is used anywhere.
Motivation was no problem either because we have Japanese exchange students teaching us the language. They make the lessons real fun.

In my first year of Japanese, we spent a couple of weeks just trying to learn hiragana. My teacher is very patient and very helpful, so the learning process ended up being rather quick. I know my hiragana well, but my katakana, not so much. That's mainly due to the fact that I don't see katakana as often that I see hiragana, which is really no surprise.

well, i downloaded the hiragana and katakana worksheets from the MLC page, printed them out and had my way with them.
i didn't rush, so i planned one day for the hiragana and one day for the katakana and it worked out really well.

i took breaks between 30min-sessions so my brain wouldn't start farting uncontrollably. (if i remember correctly, i chose sth totally unrelated to the japanese language, i think i watched episodes of CSI, lol)

and after that weekend i tested myself every evening/night for 2 weeks straight with the kanaflash program (which btw is lovely!)

so, makes 2 days for both. i was amazed that it went so smoothly O.o

what i also do from time to time is just writing them all down and see if i can still "create" them from my memory, good practice as well ^^

just don't rush yourself, that's counterproductive and spoils the fun of learning this great language ^^

It took me about 6 months or so to be able to read no problem. Memorisation of the characters took maybe a month or so. I never really tried to learn hiragana and katagana, I had my PC in Japanese so I was exposed to it everyday and it eventually go to me.